Advanced Fondant Techniques by Marina Sousa: A Craftsy Class Review

Life has been super busy for me this summer, but I finally managed to sit down and finish the most recent Craftsy class I signed up for: Advanced Fondant Techniques. I’m pretty experienced with fondant and I was familiar with a lot of the techniques taught in the class, but if you’re new to fondant or don’t feel confident with it – this is a great class to take!

Honestly, I think the “Advanced” title may scare some potential students away when in reality, I think cake decorators of all skill levels – especially beginners – could learn a great deal from this class. Marina is down-to-earth and her caking style is realistic and very approachable.

In this class, you will learn so many techniques that can be translated to every type of cake from kids birthday to wedding to anniversary or work event! It’s truly a class for cakes of all occasions! Here’s the description from Craftsy:

Celebrity cake decorator Marina Sousa reviews fondant handling basics and then works up to some very sophisticated techniques with texture, stencils, molds and piping. Follow along at your own pace as she shows you how to create lavish surface detail like lace and filigree, tie bows you’ll swear are fabric and sculpt details from fondant, gum paste and chocolate.

As I stated, there were many techniques I was already familiar with from this class – but that doesn’t mean I didn’t learn anything!

Here are some things that I did learn and hope to have an opportunity to use with future cake adventures. First – she demonstrated beautifully how to stack a cake where the cakes are offset from each other and are leaning at unusual angles.

That’s something I’ve never really attempted to do, but I’m confident I could pull it off after watching Marina do it! As she built that cake above, she also demonstrated how to wrap a box/gift cake with striped “paper”… and she shows how to do it step by step! One last thing that I’ve only recently started to use is stenciling on my cakes and Marina’s tips will definitely help me improve my stenciling work!

Probably my favorite thing about this class was that Marina has little hiccups here and there – mistakes if you will – as we all do, and she shows us how to correct things without panicking! She emphasizes that you don’t have to have every aspect of a cake be completely perfect and yet you can still have a show-stopping cake!

She actually decorates all five tiers of the cake with different techniques and methods and then shows you how to combine all of these into one big cake without it looking overdone.

With more than four hours of instruction, I truly think that all cake decorators can learn something from Advanced Fondant Techniques – especially beginners! There are so many different things across the board: you learn piping, flowers, stenciling, ribbons, impressions, bows, gifts, wrapping, paneling and more!

Does this sound like a class you would like to take? If so, I’d encourage you to go sign up now! If you’re not sure, why not just sign up with Craftsy (it’s free!) and try one of the free mini courses first? You have nothing to lose!

I'm Rose and I blog over at Rose Bakes. I'm baker, cake decorator, wife, and homeschooling mommy to 6 wonderful children! My love of cakes started at the age of 13, I started a business in 2009 then my blog was born in 2012! It's how I to share my love of cakes and help others along the way!